I laughed, relieved. "Sure. I'll ring up and get something delivered."
She reached out, her hand patting my arm. "Thank you." The patting stopped, her hand resting limply on my wrist. I looked at her in concern. Poor Caitlin had passed out.
63
I waited a moment, calling her name softly, but I got no response. Even when I stroked her hair, she didn't move. I stretched Caitlin out on her side on the sofa, checking her breathing and all those things you do for first aid on an unconscious person. As I touched her legs, she whimpered slightly, so I moved away. I dug out her pain medication and placed it on the coffee table beside her with a glass of water.
Not sure how long it had been since she'd eaten, I washed and sliced up some strawberries for her. I left them on the coffee table, too.
It'd been a long time since my initial first aid training, but I was pretty sure I had one more step to follow. I pulled out my phone to call for help from an expert more qualified than I was.
"Why'd you put her to sleep on the couch? Wouldn't she be more comfortable in her own bed?" Navid asked, without so much as a hello.
"She's unconscious, not asleep," I replied, annoyed. "Look, I need to know what happened to scare her before I arrived. I'm trying to work out whether I should call an ambulance or if she'll be better off staying home where I can let her wake up normally."
"Nothing, mate," Navid drawled. I could imagine him leaning back and stretching out in his seat as he said it. "She was sitting pretty much where she is now, watching TV, before she noticed something outside. She used the remote control to turn the TV off and went to the window. She stood there for maybe a split second, then went out the front door. Whatever scared her wasn't in the house – it was outside with you. So, whatever it was, you must have seen it, too."
I racked my brains but came up with nothing. The neighbours hadn't been in sight until I started following Caitlin as she sprinted down the street. I shook my head. "I saw nothing dangerous outside. I don't know."
Navid laughed. "Maybe she's afraid of you, mate."
I joined in his laughter. "Yeah, right. Caitlin's not scared of me. Maybe I'll ask her again when she's awake. You keep an eye out, right? Make sure we have outside cameras, too, just in case." I ended the call. It felt weird not saying goodbye, but I could wave at the cameras if I wanted to.
I checked Caitlin's breathing and pulse again. Her breathing was even and her pulse was fine. It was like she was asleep instead of unconscious, worn out from walking and running too far. I wouldn't let her do it again – I'd lift her up and carry her, no matter what she said. For the first time, I noticed she was wearing lipstick, a deep, moist red that was the same colour as the strawberries I'd sliced.
I stared at her strawberries, magnified by the glass of water to an obscene size. I wanted a taste – just one – to see if they really were as amazing as I'd hoped, but I didn't dare. Not without asking Caitlin first.
I sat in the armchair beside Caitlin, wondering if I could turn the TV on without disturbing her. I decided it didn't matter – even if she did wake up, there was no way I'd let her do anything but rest.
My mind wandered as some inane TV show played in the background, the voices a vague buzz behind my busier thoughts, wondering what Caitlin had seen that I hadn't.
"Nathan?" Caitlin asked softly.
I sat up, suddenly alert. Reaching for the bowl of strawberries, I held them out to her. "Here, eat something, so you can take pain medication to help you."
She took the bowl with both hands and a smile. "Thank you." She popped a strawberry into her mouth.
I watched, mesmerised by the red on red.
Don't. Don't even think it.
64
Little bitch?
Loud shadow in the doorway.
Flipped him the finger.
Scared, determined to fight.
Biting, kicking, punching, scratching.
Half my face on fire, flying.
Landing heavily. Taste of blood, hurt to breathe. Broken ribs.
Him on top of me. Slamming my face into the floor.
Not her face. Need her pretty.
Raked my nails down his arm.
Broke my fingers. Both the middle ones.
So I could never say up yours to him again.
Fuck you instead then.
Arms twisting. Fighting not to scream.
Tied me up.
Glint of a knife in the dim light. Sliced at my clothes. Cut me, too.
Didn't care.
"It's okay, angel. A bad dream. You're safe at home."
"Broke my fingers. I have to... write it down, while I still remember."
"Are you sure it can't wait 'til morning?"
"No, it's a short one, I'll do it now."
"Do you need my help?"
"Don't worry about it, Nathan. You don't need to hear horrible stuff like this. I won't be long – go back to sleep. I will, soon, too."
65
"Right, time to go to your physio appointment," I said, slipping an arm under her knees and another behind her back, so I could lift Caitlin from her seat. The early morning sun shone brightly through the window behind me, casting my shadow over her.
"Put me down." Her voice was cold with fury as she struggled.
Agoraphobia, I thought, as I hesitated. She didn't want to leave the house now.
"Now, Nathan." She'd never used this tone on me before – I'd only heard it in her nightmares. I did as I was told, reseating her on the couch.
I crouched in front of her, trying to meet her eyes as I spoke. "Angel, I'm only trying to help you. Everyone's trying to help you. The doctors, the physio, even me. I want to help you – "
She hooked her arms around my neck, her face so close, looking into my eyes. She cut me off mid-sentence. "If you want to help me so much, don't carry me. Help me to walk."
"But yesterday, you hurt yourself. You shouldn't overdo it and I can't stand to see you in pain like that..."
"I'll walk on my own damn feet or I'm not going," she insisted.
Unwillingly, I helped her to her feet. My arm around her waist, her arm around my shoulder.
I watched her face, that look of fierce determination, then the pain she battled to hide as she took a step. I looked away, unable to watch. I was helping her hurt herself. Again. Oh God...
Out the front door, down the steps, down the driveway to my car. Small steps, slow steps, but she was almost there.
Maybe two metres from the car, she stopped, swung her body around and clung to me. Now I couldn't help but see the tears streaming down her face. "I can't," she gasped. "It hurts too much."
Now I thought she'd let me lift her up and carry her the rest of the way. I leaned down to sweep her legs up, but Caitlin moved closer to me so I couldn't.
"They've taken everything from me. I can't even walk. Walk to the car!" Her voice came out sounding slightly hysterical.
I turned her around, carefully, to face the front door. "They didn't take anything from you. Look how far you've come. Tomorrow, you'll get further. You get better every day. They're not here. They can't get anywhere near you. It's like you keep saying. Keep fighting. Don't let them win now."
She relaxed and wiped her eyes with her fingers. "Thank you." Her arms wrapped around me in a brief hug of gratitude that was over before I was aware of what she was doing.
Then she gritted her teeth, clutching my arm so hard her nails dug into my skin, and took those last agonising steps to the car.
I felt the tiny trickle of my own warm blood as it crept down my arm, but I didn't make a sound. Caitlin was hurting worse than I was and she'd pass out from the pain before she'd permit the scream to escape her teeth. How could I do any less?
66
When we arrived back at her house, it was immediately apparent that something was wrong. Her front door was slightly open. I knew I'd pulled it shut and locked it behind me when we'd left, yet now it was ajar.
I left Cait
lin in the car while I looked over the fence into the garage. There were no cars there, but the back gate was wide open. I wanted to go around to the back of her house to investigate, but I didn't want to leave her alone and unprotected, either. Whoever had left her front door and gate open might still be here.
As if she'd read my mind, Caitlin called, "We should phone the police. I don't want to go in unless it's safe."
I glanced back at her, sitting in the passenger seat with the door open. Her feet were on the door frame, as if she was afraid to step out of the car. She hugged her knees to her chest, her face pale and her expression frightened.
She needed me. The house could wait until I had some help, I decided as I crossed the driveway to stand beside her, pulling my phone out of my pocket. I wanted to call one of our teams, or at least Navid, but I couldn't with Caitlin so close by. So, I did as she suggested and dialled the police. As the phone started to ring, I reached for her hand with my spare one.
I saw the glint of sun on metal as something fell from her hand and plinked to the paving. Her fingers cautiously grasped mine as I recognised the pocket knife I kept in the glove box, now lying open on the ground beneath the car.
When did she pull the knife from the glove box? How did she even know it was there? What was she going to do with it?
I stared at her for a moment, torn between panic and curiosity.
She looked up at me – so trusting! – and I had to drag my attention away from her to focus on what the woman on the other end of the phone line was saying.
We didn't wait long before a police car was in the driveway. Two male officers got out and approached the front door.
"Have you been inside yet?" he asked us and I shook my head.
The one who hadn't spoken pulled out a boxy item that I assumed was a Taser, but the other kept his hands free as he pushed her front door open with his shoulder.
Caitlin shivered, despite the warm day, as both police officers moved out of sight into her house. I crouched in the driveway and slid an arm around her shoulders. She leaned in closer to me, her eyes fixed on her front door, now wide open.
It was less than ten minutes before the police officers re-emerged from her house, but the wait felt interminable.
From the doorstep, the talkative one called out, "You can come in. There's no one else here," as the quiet one went around to the garage and through the open back gate, looking thoughtful.
Caitlin didn't move. She looked too stunned to protest, so I lifted her out of the car and carried her into the house. She closed her eyes as we entered the lounge room, but after a few seconds her eyes were open again, looking for some evidence of what the intruders had done.
I saw nothing different, so I put her down in an armchair before sitting in the chair closest to her. She kicked her shoes off almost immediately, bringing her knees up to curl into a little ball where she sat.
The talkative police officer pulled up a straight-backed dining chair from the next room and plonked himself down in it, across from us. Behind him, the smashed sliding door lay in pieces on the floor, except for a few jagged shards up the top. A brick that I'd seen by the back gate, presumably used to prop it open, sat on top of the broken glass.
Well, I can see how they got in, and they left by the front door, I thought, eyeing the mess on the floor of Caitlin's kitchen.
I moved my gaze from the room behind him to the police officer himself. He was close enough for me to read his name badge now, which read David... I squinted at the large number of letters in his last name, but failed to make any sense of what they spelled out, before he spoke.
He had a handheld tablet out, stylus ready. He didn't ask for our names, so he must have known who we were already. "So, you arrived how long before you called the police?"
Caitlin was silent, so I shrugged and said, "Five minutes, or less."
"How long were you gone?" He looked at Caitlin as he said it, but she didn't say a word.
I spoke up. "We left the house maybe two hours ago."
He wrote something down, before looking at Caitlin again. "Can you tell me if anything is missing?"
I opened my mouth to answer this, too, but Caitlin beat me to it. She uncurled from her foetal position, planting her feet on the floor and leaning toward him. "How do you expect me to know that, when I wasn't stupid enough to go into the house until I knew the intruder was gone?"
Both of us were stunned by her angry outburst.
Before I could react, she pushed herself out of her chair and strode over to the kitchen table. She surveyed the broken glass on the floor, gripping the table for support. She shook her head, then turned, gritting her teeth, and walked past us through the lounge room to the bedrooms.
I leapt to my feet to help her as she went past me, but she shrugged off my hand with a shake of her head and kept walking.
I followed close behind, Officer David with-the-long-last-name a few steps behind me.
The doors to all the other rooms were shut. The only open door was the one to her bedroom, so that's where she headed. Her wardrobe doors were open and so were all her drawers. There were clothes everywhere, as if they'd been looking for something. On her bed, on top of the mess of clothes, lay a big knife and a matching pair of scissors I recognised from her kitchen.
She went to the wardrobe first, opening the doors wide. A blue dress hung at an odd angle, stopping the doors from closing properly. She reached up to push the hanger back into the wardrobe, but the dress slid right off it, puddling at her feet.
She reached down and held it up. The sound that came out of her mouth was halfway between a sob and a yowl. The dress was slashed down the front in several places, so the fabric hung in tattered ribbons. If she ever wore the dress in its current state, it'd leave less to the imagination than her scanty hospital gown had.
I picked up a pair of pants on the bed, which looked like they'd been slashed with scissors. The entire crotch of the pants was cut out, from the waistband at the front all the way to the back. I dropped them again quickly before Caitlin could see them.
She started pulling items out of the wardrobe, one at a time, dropping them on the floor. Dresses, shirts, pants, skirts – almost everything she touched had been a victim of knife or scissors.
I edged away from the bed and bumped into the chest of drawers beside it. The top drawer was wide open, with something lacy hacked into pieces on top. Unable to help myself, I lifted the mess of white lace up for a better look. From the little that remained, it looked like they had once been a bra and matching knickers. Now they looked like some white elastic with scraps of lace dangling off at odd angles. What I'd give to have seen her in these when they were still intact...
The police officer stared at me, not saying a word, though he evidently wanted to say a few things. I dropped the ruined underwear back in the drawer.
Caitlin backed away from the wardrobe and sat down heavily on the bed, taking stock of the destroyed clothing strewn across it. I stumbled through the clothes on the floor to the passage outside and made it to the bathroom. In my mind's eye, I saw the drawer full of shredded lace and wondered why they'd come in and shred her clothes, but leave before she came home.
The silent police officer stood in the open bathroom doorway. He moved aside when I approached.
My eyes went to the floor of the bathroom first, but the only clothes were the pyjamas Caitlin had left there this morning when she'd taken a shower. They looked untouched.
I closed my eyes and splashed water on my face, grabbing a towel to dry myself where I stood. So I was standing in front of the mirror when I opened my eyes to see my reflection was obscured by lipstick smeared across the reflective surface – four words in bright red capitals:
FUCK YOU
LITTLE BITCH
What remained of the lipstick was on the bench beside the basin, next to a box of Caitlin's makeup that I'd never seen her use. The lipstick looked like the one she'd worn only last night. When it had gr
aced her lips, it'd reminded me of strawberries. Scrawled across her mirror, now it looked more like blood.
When I turned to meet the eyes of the silent police officer, I was more confused than ever.
The bastards who hurt Caitlin weren't likely to cut up her clothes and make a mess of her bathroom mirror. Any message they'd have for her would be vocal, physical and brutal. Any red marks left in the house would have been drawn in her blood.
The officer looked grim. "There's a woman out there who really hates your girlfriend. She should watch out."
A woman? Who hated her more than those bastards? I found that hard to imagine, until I remembered.
When his wife heard what had happened to him, she was very distraught. Her name was Laura.
The dead bastard had a wife.
I wonder if she knew what he was really doing.
She was little and pretty, with short dark hair.
The woman driver, who spoke to Caitlin before she hit her and pushed her into the car, had short dark hair.
What if the bastard's wife not only knew what he was doing, but she'd helped him? She'd be pretty pissed off, especially if she thought Caitlin had killed her husband.
I stared at the police officer in horror for a moment, before pushing past him to hurry back to Caitlin. I stood in the doorway of her room, hesitating.
She still sat on the bed, not touching any of the clothes. She'd clenched her hands into fists and her teeth bit so deep into her lip I hoped she wasn't bleeding. She was fighting so hard not to cry, with Officer David with-the-impossible-last-name's eyes on her.
She didn't trust police officers, not after one of them shot her.
Oh, shit. I'd left her alone with one.
He left the room as I entered it, murmuring something about filing a report and how he'd be in contact soon. He handed me a slip of paper, telling me it was for insurance. Caitlin nodded numbly.
I shoved the damaged clothes into a pile on one side of the bed, away from her, and sat beside her in the space I'd made. I cautiously slid my arm around her shoulders and tried to pull her closer, but she wouldn't budge.
Nightmares of Caitlin Lockyer (Nightmares Trilogy) Page 14
